


1989

by insert_nom_de_plume



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1989, Berlin Wall, Cold War, M/M, The Past, back in time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 14:18:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18896332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insert_nom_de_plume/pseuds/insert_nom_de_plume
Summary: It's 1989, and the cold war is drawing to an end. Harry Potter finds himself at the Berlin Wall.





	1989

**Author's Note:**

> This is kinda messy cause I just pushed all the events back a few decades. Just imagine the war happened in like 1985 or something, and everyone was born a few decades earlier. I don't know, I was clearly influenced by the course I took on 20th century history.

Harry Potter apparates by the side of The Wall with a subtle crack. Subtle enough that it seemingly does nothing to alert the muggle guards who stand with guns clutched in their hands, and serious, sour expressions on their faces. 

Head Auror Dowson had announced the hasty, last-minute mission to Harry via the floo. Harry’d been comfortably winding down with a bottle of friewhisky and a stack of reports on the worn out leather couch of his run-down apartment when his fire place went mad, and he’d been thrust an emergency portkey to Berlin. 

It is dark out, and bloody cold. A slight detail Harry hadn’t thought of thoroughly as he’d thrust on his simple coat over his auror robes. 

The crowd of muggles chatting loudly with the guards at the wall is only just beginning to thicken, and Harry doubts anyone’s got the energy to spare him a critique of his sense of style. 

“The wall is falling,” Dowson had said, quite stoically for an international crisis. 

“The wall?” Harry’s almost asked, which wall. 

“Yes, Potter. I need you to get there as soon as possible. We’ve been given instructions that there is no chance of the loss of lives. We doubt there is cause for such concern, therefore I believe you’re fit for field this evening.” He pauses, as if he can see Harry’s half-empty bottle of firewhisky by the coffee table. “Are you?”

“Of course,” Harry stands to his feet. “I’ll be there.”

“Not without a portkey.”

“Of course.”

The night is dark, and the shadow of excited people continue to crowd the wall. Harry moves closer to where the guards stand, before it’s too late and the only way to get across would either call for secretively hexing innocent muggles, or risking apparition. 

A man begins to hack at the wall. Some seemingly arrive prepared, with hammers and muggle tools weakly dismantling pieces of the wall. They begin to climb over one another, helping each other to cross over the wall as the guards stand, almost awkwardly, too stiff and too unguided to do much but stare and clutch at their weapons. 

Harry may or may not have used some of his wandless magic to prop a teenager up as he almost slips, hanging on to the edge of the wall with weak, pale fingers. 

Someone begins to sing a song, and then the whole crowds chants something that sounds German and old in a way so synchronized that even Harry takes a moment to let the foreign words ring in his head. He wonders what the words could possibly mean, what song would be chosen to be sung at a night that seems charged with the electric sensation of a change that is on the verge of dismantling decades of a strict regime. 

The crowd is a mixture of singing and cries of joys and whoops. Harry is half-tempted to follow the men who are hoisted over the wall. They sit, not quite sure which side of the wall to leap from. And some, from the West where Harry is, begin to cross over. And then more and more of them, until those who cross from the East and those from the West, all blur together as though they are simply people crossing a road. They nod to one another, they smile, they hug, they cry as though they are no strangers to one another. Under the winter moon, they are all one and the same. 

Harry can tell now, after an hour of standing around, watching the people, never seeming to get bored of their muggle quirks, that the night is void of any real threat to any of the parties involved. 

The armed guards relax their grips on their weapons, and some go as far as to smile and chat with the people who hang around the wall, as though waiting for someone, a loved one, to cross over. Finally, a reunion. And it seems to be just that. The reunion of relatives once divided by an Iron Curtain, then materialized into metal and graffitied brick. 

Harry leaves his post by the guards, and allows the crowd to shove him around. 

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” he hears someone say in English. It’s an American accented man, eagerly jotting things down into a scrappy notebook. “I was sent here just yesterday! I can’t believe how lucky I am!”

“Good for you, mate.”

The man beams, and the shuffles through the crowd, stopping some people and asking them questions in broken German that only intensifies the air of childish excitement that grips everyone in the near vicinity. 

Harry watches as people hold video cameras, the flash going off from several cameras as men and women continue to break pieces of the wall.

Harry finds himself climbing over the wall, and he’s on the East. Easy as that. Another flash catches his eyes, but this time the camera is directed at him, and when the photographer removes the camera from their eyes, Harry freezes, as though he’s waiting to have his picture taken again. 

In between the crowd, it’s hard not to recognize Malfoy’s blonde hair. Yet the unfamiliarity strikes him in the jarring contrast between himself and the muggle contraption he holds in his hands.

Malfoy looks right at him, and then moves as though trying to get to Potter. People push at his shoulders, and, he thinks, it’s only inevitable and entirely out of his control that he is practically thrust in Malfoy’s direction. 

“Fancy seeing you here,” Malfoy says in that familiar drawl of an unamused remark.

“I heard you’d gone away,” Harry squares his shoulders. “I hadn’t known you’d ventured onto the wrong side of things twice in a life-time.”

Harry expects anything but the snort that escapes Draco Malfoy. 

Malfoy, who looks as though he’d finally grown into his skin. Pale hair and paler skin all the same as they were in Hogwarts. But he’s less standoff-ish, now. As though he’s finally connected his mind with his body and he stands with the air of confidence that was once the counterpart of arrogance. A mocking of his father’s self-rightness that never went well with his gray eyes, or sharp chin.

“Your humor hasn’t aged as well as you have, it seems,” Malfoy says, and Harry thinks he can’t be hearing things right over all the loud chants of the people around them.

“You’re taking pictures.”

“I am,” Malfoy holds out his camera. “I took one of you.”

“I noticed.” Harry says.

“I see you’re in uniform,” and Malfoy’s eyes do more than just look. They skim over every detail of Harry’s uniform. “You still haven’t mastered an ironing charm, it seems.”

“You still talk better than you walk,” Harry says. There’s a loud bang, people cheer, and someone’s blown off a great chunk of the Berlin wall. 

Malfoy’s eyes are cool, there’s a crinkle in the corners of his eyes that suggests he’s having so much more fun than he should at the moment. 

The two of them get shoved around until they’re pushed to the outside ring of the crowd, and it’s less noise, and it’s more of just them and the guards and this bizarre night that only continues to escalate in strangeness. 

“I should take more of these,” Malfoy says, peering into his camera. He’s facing Harry, yet he’s surprised when another flash goes off. He blinks. 

“What was that for?”

“Documentation.” Malfoy moves away, takes more photographs of people doing things like climbing over the wall, and further vandalizing the area as the guards stand idle. 

“What for?”

“A magazine,” he shrugs. “Though now I assume for naught. All things considered.”

“All things considered,” Harry echoes. He’s not sure what the Auror department had in mind, but he can’t think of any way to return back to London. He’s been given no instructions in the rush of the event. Surely, they’d send someone else after him, just in case.

“I should go,” Malfoy looks his way again. “More pictures to take.”

Harry bites his inner cheek. “I could come with you. Backup.”

“No offense, but I’ve gone on plenty without that, Potter.” He looks into his camera again, but he doesn’t snap a picture, he just looks through the lens. 

“I was thinking you’d be useful in showing me around.”

That earns him the attention he seeks. “Show you around?”

“I assume you’ve been living on this end.”

“Yes, I haven’t had the chance to climb over the wall yet.”

“I’ll help. You’ll take all the pictures you need. And then you’’ll show me where to stay as I wait for a call to return home.”

Malfoy rolls his eyes. “Come on then. Who can say no to the Savior?” 

Harry thinks he could’ve done just fine without that last remark, but his feet don’t drag as he and Malfoy wind themselves between the people. Then it’s a simple climb up the wall. Harry watches as Malfoy takes a few shots from the top, watches him use his mouth to hold the old roll of film between his teeth as his nimble fingers work on inserting a new one. 

Malfoy turns his head to glance at him. “Let’s go.”

They climb down the wall, which isn’t very difficult. Harry’s becoming immune to the flash from the camera, the way he used to squint whenever it popped in the corner of his vision. 

They linger by the west side for hours, it seems. Malfoy can’t seem to run out of film, and Harry can’t seem to get sick of the view of Malfoy shooting photos of Muggles. The crowd thins by the end of the night, and by the time they climb over the wall back east, Harry’s half drunk on fatigue.

“I’ll show you around,” Malfoy says, tucking away his camera. “But I assume we’re both overdue a drink.”

“I’d rather a warm bed.”

Malfoy rolls his eyes. “Come on.”

Harry doesn’t know where he’s following him to, and it’s hard to pay attention. For while the crowd had thinned at the wall, the streets are flooded with them. Little groups of people, drunk or simply intoxicated by the night, huddle around the streets as though it’s daytime. 

Malfoy leads Harry down a narrow alley way, someplace past a bustling restaurant, and a waiter who calls out to Malfoy in rapid German. Malfoy laughs, and the sound rings in Harry’s ears as they split from the rowdy crowd of people, and into the backdoor of what seems to be a dark store.

Malfoy’s fingers run over the side of the wall, but Harry only sees this because the door is still open a crack, and the lights from outside allow him a glimpse of the room just before the door shuts and the room is filled with dim, red lights. 

“Oh,” Harry breathes, and his legs push him forward so that he finds himself examining rows of hung up film. 

“Welcome to my own laboratory,” Malfoy says with an elaborate wave of his hands. “I’m sure I’ve got a bottle of something down here. Vodka. Is that all right?”

Harry looks away from the films just long enough to make eye contact and nod in approval. “Whatever is fine. This is all yours?”

Malfoy grabs a clear bottle and stands beside him so their arms brush, and Harry smells the opened bottle of Vodka, and the sharp cologne Malfoy has on. “Yeah. The place is borrowed, from a friend. I needed it if I wanted to keep my job and was lucky enough he was thick enough to escape west.”

“He made it then?”

“Oh yes,” Malfoy takes a swig of the bottle and passes it to Harry before disappearing. “Here.”

It’s dim in the room, but Harry makes out a glossy picture of a man wrapped in fur, beaming before the camera. “That’s him. We’ve been able to keep in contact with some of those on the other side. It’s rather dangerous and awfully Gryffindor.”

“I can imagine,” Harry mumbles, still looking at the picture. He takes the bottle of vodka from Malfoy, taking a short swallow of the stuff and coughing just a little. ‘What else have you got?”

Malfoy’s arm stretches before him, and he reaches to pluck out a hanging picture. “I took this just yesterday. I reckon the film’s still developing, but there’s a stark contrast between the images of the wall we just took and this one right here.”

Harry feels his hushed breath across his cheek, and Harry wonders why they’ve got to be standing so close, and why it’s so easy to be, and why the fuck Malfoy’s almost whispering as though they’re not alone in this room. 

“Malfoy.”

Both of them taste like vodka, he knows. He can smell it when Malfoy exhales, or when he speaks. 

“Come with me.”

They leave the red room behind to take the stairs up to an even darker room. It’s an office of sorts, Harry realizes, when Malfoy casts a Lumos. 

“Oh,” he wonders, as his eyes fall across perhaps a million framed images. 

“I take people’s pictures too,” Malfoy explains, standing behind a desk and rummaging through boxes. Harry catches a flash of his silver hair, falling across his face before Malfoy quickly tucks it away behind his ear. “Not just for the papers, I mean.”

“They’re wonderful.”

“Are they?” he takes a moment to look up, from whatever he’s doing, just to send Harry a smile. 

“I think so,” Harry finds himself walking towards the hanging pictures, examining one of a stiff family. “Do you take any magical ones?”

“Yes,” he hears. “But it’s far more difficult to develop those without anybody noticing. I think I’ve found a solution to quicken the process.”

“Potions come in handy?”

“Very.”

Harry turns and Malfoy’s holding a stack of pictures in his hands. “Tiananmen Square. Only a few months ago.”

“Really?” and Harry can’t help but take them from Malfoy’s hands. “These are wicked. I was there, you know?”

“Were you?”

“Yeah,” Harry looks up, smiling. “Pity, huh?”

“I’m not sure. Tonight feels different, does it not?”

“Yes. I suppose I understand what you mean,” Harry says. “There’s something more electrifying about the wall more than. Well. The Square was horrific. Hardly any of the aurors made a difference. It was all so last minute, and awfully difficult to access the international portkey.”

“It was.”

They stand looking through the pictures Malfoy had taken, and he shows Harry some he took on magical film, and the tanks that had rolled through the streets as though monsters from a low-budget horror flick. 

And when they’ve had enough of those, they stand almost awkwardly. Harry’s still clutching the bottle of vodka, he realizes, and he takes a sip as he thinks of what to say next. 

“Will you leave?”

“Leave?” Malfoy asks.

“Yes. After, well, after tonight. Will you be coming home?”

“Oh,” Malfoy looks away, tidies the pictures in his hands and then turns to tuck them away behind his desk. There’s a round window there, overlooking other buildings, and the lights from the city are subtle and sweet. Different from London, Harry thinks. “I’m not sure what’s home anymore.”

He releases a short laugh. “That sounds dramatic, doesn’t it?”

“No. I understand.”

“Do you?” Malfoy asks. “They’ve quarantined the manor, did you know? I’ve got nothing to return to. Not truly. Father is locked up and may as well be dead. Mother, she’s somehow gotten away to Paris. I haven’t seen her. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Harry echoes. “But you can now. You will be able to, I mean.”

“Yes.” But Malfoy doesn’t seem desperate to see anybody any time soon. “I suppose. Besides, I’ve built all of this myself.”

He waves his arms around the room, and Harry thinks he almost looks like a pastor, holding his arms out like that as though beckoning forgiveness from God.

He almost giggles. 

“You speak any German?”

“Of course, who do you take me for?” Malfoy frowns, all serious until he cracks a smile. “Come on, then. I’ll found you a place to stay.”

They leave the building and find themselves out in the cold streets again, the ebbing sounds of some celebration happening a few paces behind them.

“Where do you stay?” Harry asks.

Malfoy looks at him. “Someplace down there. I would crash at the office but they’re surprisingly strict about those regulations.”

“Malfoy,” Harry says. “What was it like? Living here.”

“Not as bad as you think,” Malfoy says after a while. “At first it was strange, but then you adapt. I reckon I’ve got a unique perspective, and it’s different for everyone. The most I’ve had trouble with was work. We couldn’t get any of that Tiananmen Square business published anywhere. No one wanted it, in case it provoked any outbursts here. Yet people have heard it, and look where we are.”

They stop by a small building not too many blocks away from Malfoy’s office. “I live just here.”

“Here?” Harry looks up, and it’s difficult not to notice the difference between this building and the manor.

But someone has grown rose bushes by picket fence, and when Malfoy unlocks, and they climb up the short steps to the door, he can see many pots of flowers and other plants. 

“Come in, if you’d like.”

“I should find a place to stay.”

“Don’t be silly. Come in.”

“Malfoy,” Harry breathes. “I’m not sure.”

“Why?”

Harry’s cheeks flush, and he looks away.

Malfoy’s got his hand on the door knob, and he fishes his keys out from his pocket, and unlocks the door. “I’ll set up the couch.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. You saved us from grave evil, Potter. It’s the least I can do in behalf of the wizarding world. And the muggles, really.”

“All right, all right. Let me in.”

It’s a few floors up to Malfoy’s flat, and once they’re there it’s obvious even in the dark, that the flat is half-lived in.

The only items personalized are Malfoy’s photos, and when they both cast Lumos, the images are the first thing Harry can see. Here, Malfoy hardly hides the magical photos. They hang from frames, and the films hang from clothing lines along his kitchen. 

“It’s not the tidiest. Work-“

“I understand. I’ve got files and papers lying about everywhere. It drives Hermione wild.”

Malfoy laughs. “Oh, I can imagine it does.”

Harry finds himself smiling, and then Malfoy pulls out a spare set of covers and pillow, and he lays them over the bare couch facing his fireplace. “This should do, I believe.”

“Thank you, Malfoy. I appreciate you letting me stay.”

Malfoy looks away. “Of course.”

His hands are in his back pockets, and he takes them out only to tuck them back in. “Well. If you need anything I’m right across the hall.”

“All right.”

They stand doing nothing for a few seconds before Harry shakes off his coat, and then his long auror robe so that he’s in slacks and a rumpled white shirt.

Malfoy clears his throat. “Right. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

-  
Harry wakes up slowly, like he’s woken for the first time as a newborn child. The sun rays flit through the windows and warm his bones before he stretches his muscles, still laying on the couch.

His eyes fly open, and he sits up perhaps a little to hastily. 

Malfoy’s couch. Malfoy’s flat.

He looks around him but the flat’s bare, as it was last night before Malfoy’s shut the lights out. 

Now he sees things more clearly. The bare walls, the creaking, old floorboards, the yellowing ceiling. 

Harry stands up and moves towards the nearest window. Peering out, he realizes he sees nothing beyond the building right across from them. The bricked wall and the perfectly spaced out windows. It reminds him of something from a Hitchcock film.

“Coffee?”

Harry turns. “Good morning.”

“Morning.”

Malfoy’s in a dark blue robe over what appears to be a white set of pajamas. “So, coffee?”

“Tea, please. If you’ve got any.”

“Just the one,” Malfoy tucks his hands into his pockets. “Are you feeling cold? I could get the fire.”

“Don’t worry about it. Really. I should get out of your hair soon. I’ve already spent the night.”

And it still makes no sense to Harry, how Malfoy’s become so nice.

Malfoy shrugs. “Join me in the kitchen?”

Harry follows him there and he pulls out an iron chair, cringing as it squeals against the kitchen tiles. He hadn’t thought he’d had that much to drink last night.

Malfoy slides a plate across from him. “I’ve got toast and butter.”

“Perfect.”

“And tea, of course.”

“Of course,” Harry smiles. 

“Do you know when they’ll call you back?”

Malfoy’s turned away, moving behind a kettle and two mugs he’d pulled out from the cupboards.

“They’ve got a special way of finding us,” Harry says. “Something about trained owls that only need to recognize our magical signatures to find us. I think if they wanted to reach me they would have by now.”

“Perhaps it’s been a busy morning.”

“I’m sure it has been,” Harry says.

“Oh, how stupid of me,” Malfoy turns and hurriedly fiddles with what seems to be a radio. 

Outdated, but it works just as fine as Malfoy jumps from channels before finding what seems to be the right one.

The presenter is German, that part is clear, Harry realizes. But Malfoy’s bent almost uncomfortably, even with the volume up, just to listen.

Then he straightens up, and goes back to the tea and coffee.

“What’s it saying?”

“It’s down. For good. The government too, it seems.”

“Oh,” Harry says, and Malfoy slides his mug towards him, and Harry’s just grateful he’s got something to hold onto. “That’s good.”

“It’s very good,” Malfoy says, and he sits across from him. And they sit there, Malfoy listening to the radio, and Harry half-waiting for Malfoy to say something to him. Anything, it wouldn’t matter what it was.

“They should call me back anytime, then.”

Malfoy tears his eyes away from the radio. They are cold and piercing. “They should.”

“Are you going to work today?”

“No. I don’t think anyone will.”

Harry laughs. “No. You’re right.”

“I think we should stay here.”

“What?”

Malfoy applies a generous layer of butter over his toast. “With everything going on I think it’s safe to assume the streets’ll be a riot.”

He’s sitting across from Harry, and his long legs are intrusive as they stretch beneath the narrow table.

“Oh,” Harry lifts the tea cup to his lips. It’s slightly chipped, but he doesn’t mind. “You’re right.”

“I am,” and it almost looks as though Malfoy winks.

Harry swallows down his tea. “So you’re stuck with me.”

“And you’re stuck with me.”

“Whatever shall we do?”

“I have an idea or two,” Malfoy takes the last delicate bite from his toast, and then brushes the crumbs from his fingers as he stands. “Wait here.”

Harry finishes his toast, and nurses his empty tea cup between his hands as Malfoy unfolds himself, and disappears into the narrow hall.

“We’re taking pictures,” he says as he returns, holding a small camera in his hand with a giant flash. 

“Pictures of what?”

“Of you,” Malfoy’s lips twist up in the corners. “Come on, Potter. I’m sure you’re quite acquainted with the camera lens by now.”

“Sod off,” Harry stands from the kitchen table. “I look like rubbish.”

“Nonsense,” Malfoy smiles, and the camera’s flashing in Harry’s direction before he can breathe. “Go on, take your shirt off.”

“What?”

Malfoy laughs. “You don’t have to. Circe. I should have taken a shot of that.”

“Where would you like me, then?” and Harry’s pulling his thin shirt off his chest before he can think himself out of it. 

Malfoy hardly reacts, and looks around himself momentarily. “There. By the window. The shot of the city in the back should go well.”

Harry rolls his shirt and clutches it in his hand as he walks over by the window. The white panes are in need of some dusting, and the windows are stained, but Malfoy lets him lean against the cold glass and takes a few photos before Harry can ask if he looks ridiculous or not.

He tosses the shirt away, but Malfoy tosses it back. “I like how it looks. It brings out your muscles.”

“My muscles.”

“Yes,” Malfoy smiles behind the lens. 

Harry doesn’t know what to do so he does what Malfoy says. Even when Malfoy gets really close to him, and it seems as though the flash will blind him. But it doesn’t, and Malfoy steps back and nothing’s changed.

“All right,” Malfoy sets the camera aside. 

“Done?” Harry shoves his shirt back on.

“For now.”

“Show me who else you’ve taken pictures of.”

“I’m not quite sure you want to see those,” Malfoy says, but his voice is half amused.

“Why not?”

“They’re quite explicit,” but Malfoy’s standing, and he’s heading towards a pile of cardboard boxes. He pulls out a few photo albums, and they slide onto the couch as Malfoy flips one open across their laps. 

“A few risky lovers?”

“No.”

They’re of men. All of them. Or at least, Harry thinks, this first one is.

So many, he can tell, were taken inside of nightclubs and discos. Some with swinging colored lights and glitter pressed lips. Eyelids that sparkle, and jeans that hug too tightly. There’s a man swinging around a pole, and he’s wearing nothing but a loose garment around his hips. 

“Oh,” Harry says, and he flips through pages and pages of that stuff, of men in wigs and high heels. His heart is thudding in his chest. 

“Oh?”

Harry looks up, and Malfoy is looking at him, expecting something though unsure what exactly. “This must be illegal. Here.”

“Well, yes, officer,” Malfoy rolls his eyes and shuts the album. “Are you going to report us to the authorities?”

“No, I mean. It doesn’t scare you?”

Malfoy looks him in the eyes, and he does a strange thing where he squints, as though he can’t quite grasp Harry’s stupidity. And Harry can’t blame him.

“Of course it fucking scares me, Potter,” and Malfoy’s scoffing as though Harry’s entire existence is a joke. Which, frankly, it is. “That was very Gryffindor of you to ask.”

“I just mean,” Harry wipes his sweaty hands across his jeans. “I mean. It must be terrible.”

“It is terrible everywhere you go, it doesn’t make my case any special.”

“Your case.”

“Well, yes. You think I’d take pictures like these if I liked to fuck women?”

“Right.”

Malfoy tucks away the first album, and then he the sets the other on Harry’s lap. “I might go down to the store. You can look through these if you want. Or leave. I don’t care.”

“You said we shouldn’t leave,” Harry says, but Malfoy’s already standing and Harry cranes his neck just to catch his eyes. 

“I say a lot of things.”

Harry runs his fingers over the sides of the photo album. “I’ll stay here.”

“Fantastic,” and Malfoy’s out of the flat. Just like that.

And it’s so fucking quiet, Harry thinks. He hadn’t noticed how quiet it could be in a small building like this until Malfoy’d gone out, and now he’s left alone with nothing but the occasional sound of creaking floorboards. He’s half-tempted to switch on the radio again, just to having something fill the void.

Harry looks down at the photo album in his lap, and turns over the cover page. It is clear right away that this one is far more explicit than the first. 

They are intimate, which make them far more scandalous. Of men. Of course they are of men, but they are of men of every color, and men of every shape. 

They are nude, or partially nude, and some lean against surfaces as Harry had leaned against Malfoy’s window.

It’s a collection of skin tones and warm shades, and of rippling abs and muscles, of soft curves and pubic hair. 

Harry’s never seen anything like it. Not even in one of those magical magazines the boys used to keep under their beds at Hogwarts, charmed to replay images of men pounding into women.

Because this wasn’t anything near pornographic. It was simply pictures of men, and it captured them in their natural state. Sitting on stools against a simple backdrop, hugging their knees, natural light filtering through a nearby window. 

Harry can picture Malfoy standing behind a camera, capturing these photos as though it was no big deal. As though he wasn’t breaking the rules or leaving a mark. Harry thinks Malfoy’s leaving a mark. Harry thinks he’s losing his mind. 

The door creaks open, and Malfoy steps through. He’s holding a pack of cigarettes, and nothing else.

“Want one?” 

“No, thanks.”

“You weren’t called back,” Mafloy’s lips hug a cigarette as he walks across the living room to prop open a window, then fishes for a matchstick.

Harry stands, and lights the cigarette for him. Malfoy’s breath comes out in a puff, but Harry doesn’t flinch away.

“No. I wasn’t.”

Malfoy watches him over his cigarette, then pulls it out of his mouth and gives it a tap over an ashtray. 

“You didn’t leave either, after looking through the pictures.”

“How do you know I looked through the pictures?”

Malfoy passes him the cigarette. 

“I don’t want it.”

“You do.”

Harry takes the cigarette, but he only holds it over the ashtray. “They’re good pictures.”

“I know. I took them.”

“Malfoy, you are perhaps the most frustrating man I’ve ever met.”

Malfoy’s fingers brush his, and the cigarette is stolen from his fingers. “Do you fuck men?”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Harry wants to grab the cigarette and toss it out the open window. “No.”

Malfoy looks at him for a very long time. “Do you want to?”

“Does it matter?”

Malfoy raises is eyebrows. “Well. Do you?”

Harry takes a deep breath, but he inhales some of the smoke, and it does nothing to ease him. “On occasion.”

“Do you want to fuck one? Right now?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting you kiss me. Or fuck me. I know you’ve been dying to since last night, and you haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since you saw those pictures.”

Harry wants to ask if he’s asked this of every man he’s taken a photo of. He wants to know if these albums are the pre-game before he leads them into his bedroom, but Malfoy stubs the cigarette and slides his sweater over his head.

It reveals the palest chest Harry’s every seen, and pink nipples that stand under the cold wind that wafts through the window. It’s suddenly warm, as Malfoy tosses his sweater as his feet, and bends to take his trousers off. He stands, by the half opened window, in nothing but his briefs.

“Go on,” Malfoy leans against the wall. “Your turn.”

“Are you drunk?”

“I don’t have to be to know that I want you.”

“That’s it? You just walk around doing whatever you want whenever you want to?”

“Yes. If you want to, too.”

“Fuck, Malfoy,” Harry turns away and runs his fingers through his hair. 

Malfoy’s fingers dig into his waist, and twists him around so Malfoy’s neck bends, and they’re almost nose to nose. “What are you so afraid of, Potter?”

“I don’t fucking know,” Harry whispers, and he’s looking at Malfoy’s lips, like one gazes at the sun when they know full well that they shouldn’t. 

“May I kiss you?”

Harry closes his eyes, and he thinks of kissing Cho or Ginny. He thinks of what Hermione would say, or what Luna would say, having both been terrified over something the Malfoys had done to them.

But he’s standing in a flat somewhere far away, where it’s cold and only warm when Malfoy is this close to kissing him. 

Harry leans in, and their lips meet half way. Malfoy’s lips are cold, but soft, like kissing rose petals just after it had rained. Harry’s hands are quick to find Malfoy’s hair, and their lips slide together easily, as though they’ve kissed a thousand times before. 

—  
Harry wakes up.

Not from Malfoy’s lips against his inner thighs, or fingers running through his hair, or whispered promises of more kisses in bed. 

He wakes from the sound of fluttering wings and a pecking beak. When he peels his eyes open, there, the ending to a possibly new beginning. 

Malfoy has his head resting on Harry’s side, though he doesn’t stir when Harry slips out of his bed. He slides on his pants, and shirt, and opens the window. 

When he turns around again, Malfoy’s eyes are beacons of light in the dark room. Neither of them say a word, and it burns Harry’s throat.

Though he leans over the bed, and delivers Malfoy the longest kiss. A kiss of promise and unfulfilled desires. 

“I’ll see you around,” Harry whispers, running his fingers through Malfoy’s hair just in case this is the last time. 

“Perhaps you will.”

“I’d better.”

“You do always find a way to get what you want, Potter.”

Harry’s not so sure about that, but he hopes for once that Malfoy’s right.


End file.
